This segment from The Jewish Americans shows how in the 19th century Jews and other groups were sometimes not welcomed when they immigrated to the United States.

With the annexation of Texas in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, Tejanos—Texans of Mexican descent—lost property rights and political power in a society dominated by Anglos. Through discriminatory practices and violent force, Tejanos were kept at the bottom of the new political and socio-cultural order. From 1900–1930, as an influx of immigrants from Mexico came north to meet a growing demand for cheap labor in the developing commercial agriculture industries, Tejanos experienced continued discrimination in employment, housing, public facilities, the judicial system, and educational institutions. In addition, many were disenfranchised, due to poll tax requirements and all-white primaries, and excluded from jury duty. The struggle of Mexican Americans to end such discriminatory practices accelerated following World War II. In the early 1950s, attorneys for two Mexican-American civil rights groups, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American G.I. Forum, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hernandez v. Texas that exclusion from jury duty based on class constituted discrimination. The state of Texas acknowledged that in the previous 25 years no person with a Spanish surname had served on any juries. The Warren Court ruled unanimously that persons of Mexican American ancestry did constitute a class within the community in which the original trial was held, and that exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries resulted in a denial of the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment for Mexican American defendants. In the following interview, Pete Tijerina, a member of LULAC and the first executive director of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), discussed all-Anglo juries and other discriminatory conditions in Texas society in the 1950s and 1960s.

This course explores the ideal of social justice. What makes a society just? We will approach this question by studying three opposing theories of justice - utilitarianism, libertarianism, and egalitarian liberalism - each foundational to contemporary political thought and discourse.

America fought World War II to preserve freedom and democracy, yet that same war featured the greatest suppression of civil liberties in the nation's history. In an atmosphere of hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. One of the most important of the legal challenges to the internment policy was Korematsu v. United States, a case brought by Fred T. Korematsu, a Nisei (an American-born person whose parents were born in Japan). Korematsu had been arrested by the FBI for failing to report for relocation and was convicted in federal court in September 1942. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a sharply divided 6-3 decision, upheld Korematsu's conviction in late 1944. The majority opinion, written by Justice Hugo Black, rejected the plaintiff's discrimination argument and upheld the government's right to relocate citizens in the face of wartime emergency.

The development and evolution of labor market structures and institutions. Particular focus on competing explanations of recent developments in the distribution of wage and salary income and in key institutions and organizational structures. Special attention to theories of worker motivation and behavior, the determination of wages, technology, and social stratification.

" This course is an introduction to labor economics with an emphasis on applied microeconomic theory and empirical analysis. We are especially interested in the link between research and public policy. Topics to be covered include: labor supply and demand, taxes and transfers, minimum wages, immigration, human capital, education production, inequality, discrimination, unions and strikes, and unemployment."

One of the greatest industrial tragedies in U.S. history occurred on March 25, 1911, when 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist company in New York City. The victims had been trapped by blocked exit doors and faulty fire escapes. The aftermath of the catastrophe brought grief and recriminations. Protest rallies and memorial meetings were held throughout the city. During one meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, tension broke out between the working-class Lower East Siders who filled the galleries (and saw class solidarity as the ultimate solution to the problems of industrial safety) and the middle- and upper-class women in the boxes who sought reforms like creation of a bureau of fire prevention. The meeting would have broken up in disorder if not for a stirring speech by Rose Schneiderman, a Polish-born former hat worker who had once led a strike at the Triangle factory. Although she barely spoke above a whisper, Schneiderman held the audience spellbound.

The emotional and highly publicized case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti became a touchstone and rallying cry for American radicals. In 1920 the two Italian immigrants were accused of murder and although the evidence against them was flimsy, they were readily convicted, in large part because they were immigrants and anarchists. They were executed, despite international protests, on August 23, 1927. Aldino Felicani, printer and publisher of the anarchist paper Controcorrente, was a long-time acquaintance of Sacco and Vanzetti; in 1920 he organized the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. In this interview with Dean Albertson, recorded in 1954, Felicani recalled his relationships with the accused men and his work on the defense committee. His story gave a sense of the emotion of the last days of Sacco and Vanzetti.

This and lesson plan and accompanying video enables students to examine the experiences of Muslims and Arab Americans following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Students will investigate an example of prosecution of Arab immigrants living in Detroit, Michigan. Students will choose from among other primary source materials to describe particular experiences and generalize about the broader experiences of Muslims and Arab Americans.

This ten-minute video examines what obligation countries have to refugees. It’s a question as important today as it was in 1975, when the United States evacuated 130,000 South Vietnamese allies during the fall of Saigon and brought them to this country to start new lives. Today, as Afghan and Ukrainian migrants settle in the United States, students will explore whether refugee resettlement is better now than it was for the Vietnamese 50 years ago, and what is owed to people fleeing war, destruction and despair across the globe.

This 9-minute video illustrates how demographic trends and a changing California economy in the 1990s created a backlash against immigration, only to be followed by another swing in the ideological pendulum. This lesson examines how economic and demographic forces affect the strategies of the political parties, and demonstrates how policies like Proposition 187 can produce unintended and surprising consequences.

Over 20,000 migrants from England crossed the Atlantic to the new colony of Massachusetts Bay in the decade of the 1630s. This sudden influx of settlers became known to historians as the "Great Migration." Once in New England, they quickly dispersed to various towns. About forty families followed Sir Richard Saltonstall and the Reverend George Phillips four miles up the Charles River to found the community of Watertown in July 1630. Many had relocated from the East Anglian region of England, where William Pond, the correspondent's father, lived. These families attempted to set up a familiar farm economy based on grain and livestock, but early dreams of an easy trade with the Indians proved elusive. Their concerns focused on feeding themselves and achieving economic sufficiency.

The southern textile mills, which had expanded dramatically during World War I, faced serious decline in the 1920s. New tariffs, the growth of textile manufacturing in other parts of the world and the shorter skirt lengths of the 1920s, which required less fabric, exacerbated the problems brought on by wartime overexpansion. Textile manufacturers responded by trying to cut wages and increase workloads. Nevertheless, textile workers often look back at the 1920s with genuine affection and nostalgia. In this 1979 interview with historian James Leloudis, Edna Y. Hargett, a former textile worker, described the closeness of the mill village and the "love offering": a collection for sick workers to replace lost wages in an era when there was no sick leave.

This lesson plan displays records from the 1880 and 1990 census schedules showing that Laura Ingalls, Almanzo Wilder, and families of the popular Little House on the Prairie series were not mere characters but were real people. Teaching activities are included to help students learn more about the census.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought an enormous chunk of Mexico to the United States. This added to the territory obtained by the annexation of Texas in 1845, but more than just territory was added. More than 75,000 Spanish-speaking residents became U.S. citizens, but the struggle to achieve that citizenship was long and often unsuccessful. Mexican-Americans lost political power and civil liberties quickly in Texas. Justice was hard to secure and the ranching country of South Texas became a landless borderland for Anglo and Hispano alike. Cattle thieves were rampant. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans also had to endure a terror campaign by the Texas Rangers, the state's leading law enforcement officers. One of those Rangers, N. A. Jennys described a complex pattern of ethnic conflict along the border in 1875 in his A Texas Ranger. The Rangers were founded in 1835 to fight Indians, formed a special corps in the Mexican War, and were re-established after the Civil War.

Migration across the Atlantic often involved a series of stages, drawing people to London before they embarked on their journey. John Harrower, a 40-year-old shopkeeper and tradesman, lived in the far north of the British Isles. Like many of the 40,000 residents of the Scottish Highlands who left after 1760, he faced poverty and little opportunity. Harrower initially planned to travel to the Netherlands but ended up in London. The great metropolis, the largest in the western world, swelled as thousands looked unsuccessfully for employment. After several weeks, Harrower signed an indenture to travel to Virginia as a schoolmaster. He sailed with 71 other male indentees, some from London, but many others from across England and Ireland. With his relatively privileged training, Harrower was fortunate and found a new life on a tidewater plantation. These excerpts from his journal tell of his time in London, journey across the Atlantic, and arrival in Virginia.

The emotional and highly publicized case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti became a touchstone and rallying cry for American radicals in the early 20th century. The two Italian immigrants were accused in 1920 of murdering a paymaster in a holdup. Although the evidence against them was flimsy, they were readily convicted, in large part because they were immigrants and anarchists. Despite international protests, they were executed on August 23, 1927. The case was commemorated in an outpouring of literary expression. On the first anniversary of the execution, the Nation published Malcolm Cowley's "For St. Bartholomew's Day." The poem ended in defiance and resolve, when Cowley invoked Sacco and Vanzetti as saints martyred to the cause of freedom. In an ironic gesture, he used images of Catholicism to commemorate the two devout anarchists (and thus atheists) and to proclaim them as spiritual leaders.

In the dramatic 1919 steel strike, 350,000 workers walked off their jobs and crippled the industry. The U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor set out to investigate the strike while it was still in progress. In his testimony before the committee, John Anderson, a helper in the open-hearth furnace at the Homestead steelworks in Pennsylvania, maintains that the steelworkers were satisfied with conditions. Although born in Scotland, Anderson identified himself as an"American" in distinction from the (also) foreign-born laborers who are out on strike.

In 1924, Congress and President Calvin Coolidge drastically restricted immigration to the U.S. by placing most countries on a strict quota system. Mexico was excluded from these restrictions. In this same period, however, Mexicans in the U.S. commonly faced discrimination and even racial violence. In this lesson, students read six historical documents to answer the central historical question: Were Mexicans welcome in the United States in the 1920s?

America fought World War II to preserve freedom and democracy, yet that same war featured the greatest suppression of civil liberties in the nation's history. In an atmosphere of hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. On March 18, 1942, Roosevelt authorized the establishment of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to govern these detention camps. He chose as its first head Milton Eisenhower, a New Deal bureaucrat in the Department of Agriculture and brother of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a 1942 film entitled Japanese Relocation, produced by the Office of War Information, Eisenhower offered the U.S. government's rationale for the relocation of Japanese-American citizens. He claimed that the Japanese "cheerfully" participated in the relocation process, a statement belied by all contemporary and subsequent accounts of the 1942 events.